Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy

Lecture by Prof. Stephen Walt, former Academic Dean at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

The presentation explained why the rest of the world had growing concerns about America's world role, and described the different strategies that other states were using to limit (or "tame") American power. It also discussed what the United States should have done in response.

Stephen M. Walt was Academic Dean at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (2002-2006), where he held the Robert and Renee Belfer Professorship in International Affairs. He previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, where he served as Master of the Social Science Collegiate Division and Deputy Dean of Social Sciences. He was co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, and co-chair of the Editorial Board of the journal International Security. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 2005.

Professor Walt is the author of The Origins of Alliances (1987), which received the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award, and Revolution and War (1996). Some of his articles are "An Unnecessary War," Foreign Policy, (Winter 2002-03); "American Hegemony: Its Prospects and Pitfalls," Naval War College Review, (Spring 2002); and "The Relationship between Theory and Policy in International Relations," Annual Review of Political Science (2005). His most recent book at the time of the lecture was Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (W.W. Norton, 2005).

The lecture was organized jointly by our anti-Americanism program and IRES Department.